Amazon Deforestation

From the October 15, 2007, Environment section of Maclean's magazine, pages 86-88:

Environment
FIRE IN THE AMAZON

Brazil says less rainforest is disappearing, but deforestation is continuing at an alarming rate

by Isabel Vincent

When Brazil's President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva addressed the United Nations General Assembly last month, he certainly wanted to come across as one of the world's "green" leaders. He pushed biofuels, and pledged Rio de Janeiro as a venue for a global environmental conference in 2012. Near the top of his agenda was trying to end deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. To this end, he said, his government was working hard, and in the last three years the rate of deforestation in the Amazon region has been cut in half.

Taken on its own, the figure may seem to be a tremendous accomplishment for Lula's centre-left Workers Party government, which had made ecology one of its cornerstones during this first term in office, beginning in October 2002. But when you consider that, under the Lula government, deforestation in the Amazon reached its highest level ever, the Workers Party ecological records starts to look incredibly grim. "What Lula is saying now that after deforestation reached a peak in his first three years of government, it is slowing down," says Roberto Smeraldi, director of Friends of the Earth's Sao Paulo chapter, which focuses its efforts on the Amazon. "You have to read this in context, because during his time in office it went up higher than it ever had, and on average it is still higher than at any other time in the past."

Already, fully 20 per cent of the Amazon rainforest has been lost to deforestation, experts say. Between July 2005 and July 2006, 14,000 square km of forest disappeared as ranchers and others slashed and burned vegetation in order to make way for agribusiness ventures, such as cattle raising and soy bean production (in the Amazon, the cattle population is increasing by more than two million head per year - a huge threat). The year before, 21,000 square km of rainforest were lost. In 2005, parts of the Amazon also experienced the worst drought the forest has seen in a century. Scientists say that if the trend continues, the Amazon rainforest will start to die.

As it is, the burning of the Amazon in Brazil has made the country the third-largest source for carbon emissions in the world, after China and the United States. Moreover, scientists say that information on the reduction of deforestation is still very partial and unclear, and they are waiting for satellite images scheduled to be released at the end of the year, in order to make up their minds on whether deforestation has indeed dipped by 50 per cent. But what remains clear, Smeraldi says, is that "a huge area of forest is being converted every year in the Amazon, beyond any social and economic rationale."

Globally, that is a huge concern. Recently, diplomat Hans Blix, the former head of the UN Monitoring, Verification and inspection Commission, called global warming "a greater long-term threat to mankind than weapons of mass destruction.' He said that "a vital part of tackling the problem is to halt the destruction of tropical rainforests as a matter of urgency." Scientists and environmentalists around the world agree, and consider the preservation of the Amazon of vital importance. Recently, a group of them began the Forests Now Declaration from Brazil to Bali, an initiative that calls on governments to take urgent action on deforestation in the tropics, which contributes up to 25 per cent of global carbon emissions, second only to the use of fossil fuels. The declaration, which is being signed by leaders and environmentalists around the world, will be presented to the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bali in December.

But the destruction of the Amazon also has a very direct regional environmental impact. "We're all obsessed with carbon emissions, but if I were Lula, i would be concerned about rainfall l and the disruption in trade winds that are resulting from Amazon deforestation," says Hilton Philipson, a trustee of the Global Canopy Program and a force behind the Forests Now Declaration in London. "If you take away the moderating influence of the forest, you get stronger upswellings of hotter air, rains are more powerful, and there will be more violent weather patterns originating in the Amazon basin." Already, scientists have blamed an upsurge in hurricanes in the Caribbean on deforestation in the Amazon. The strong force of hurricanes such as Katrina are also blamed on problems originating in the Amazon rainforest, they say.

But what to do about an area that environmentalists are lobbying to keep untouched - and which many Brazilian administrations have seemed eager to develop and exploit? As lula himself noted during his first year in office, "This region cannot be treated like it was something from another world, untouchable, in which the people don't have the right to the benefits." Ever the pragmatist, Lula set about pledging to complete work on such projects as the BR-163, a highway connecting the central farming state of Mato Grosso with the Amazon region, so that soy beans can be easily transported for export to the iver port of Santarem. Also under development is the Transoceanic Highway, a continuation of the TransAmazon Highway, which will link the town of Rio Branco in the deep Amazon to Perus' Pacific ports. Environmentalists fear that in two years, when the road is scheduled to be completed, there will be an asphalted connection linking the Amazon region to the Pacific and China, which is keen to improve its access to the forest.

"I'm not in the game of blame, but it seems to be that the structure of the world economy is not giving Brazil a chance," says Philipson. Favourable world-market grain and beef prices actually increase deforestation in the Amazon as ranchers seek to expand their productivity and burn more forest to accommodate more cattle. Last week, Lula also announced plans to plant sugar cane in devastated forest areas in order to increase Brazil's production of ethanol (the country's vehicles have been running on ethanol for more than 30 years and Brazil is a world leader in the production of biofuels). It was a move that brought further criticism. "Lula is presenting himself to the world as a mascot for biofuels rather than as a statesmen for ecology," said Marcelo Leite, a political columnist writing in the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper.

Environmental critics fear that farming and infrastructure projects will only bring more development to the Amazon, as speculators occupy land when it is still cheap, before highways are paved or other projects such as dams are built. But Philipson notes that Lula has done some good in the Amazon, especially by demarcating the 17,000-square-km Raposa Serra do Sol native reservation in the Amazon state of Roraima in 2005. And he says the answer to the preservation of rainforests around the world is simple: money. If you want to save the rainforest, pay the Brazilian government for "environmental services," and treat the forest as "a giant utility." Insurance companies, for example, ubiquitous around the world, could be taxed and the money sent to governments to administer tropical forests. "There is a whole new industry there in the export of environmental services to the world," says Philipson. "The only way we are going to save the forest is money, and the recognition that the forest delivers environmental services to mankind."

Brazilian scientists Antonio Bonato Nobre agrees. A federal researcher with the National Institute for Amazon Research, he says every hectare that is currently being used for agri-business in the Amazon yields US$22 per year. "If we could find a way of ascribing more than $22, we don't have to worry about anything, the forest will be protected," he said, adding that at least one Amazon governor is behind the plan and has already started telling other politicians they could earn more money under a scheme to leave the forest alone. "What is happening to the Amazon is not the fault of the Brazilian government, but of the international economic system," says Nobre. "Money talks because people are selfish. Everything else is hypocrisy,and it won't protect the standing forests."